The present invention concerns a method and apparatus for the production of carpet tiles, in which the underside of a textile floor covering, for example a felt or a tufted fabric, is first covered with a preliminary or precoating material and is subsequently covered with a heavy coating. The carpet band produced in this manner then is cut into carpet tiles.
The usual procedure for the production of textile floor coverings, as for example carpet tiles, is to cover a tufted fabric, or felt fabric on its underside with a backing covering that consists of a heavy layer material such as bitumen. It has become evident, however, that the textile fibers easily separate out of such tufted fabric, or felt fabric, particularly when the floor covering is subjected to external loads. For this reason the known procedure has been changed to first cover carpet tiles, whose wear resistance is subjected to great demands, on the underside of the tufted or felt fabric with a pre-coating that soaks into the filaments of the nap and bonds the textile fibers firmly by connecting them with the basic tissue/weave before covering them with a heavy coating. This procedure has become accepted although it entails an additional working step,--the pre-coating--, because a durable carpet tile that can withstand hard use could only be produced in this manner.
The use of filled polyurethane as heavy coating is known. A pre-coating is not required when polyurethane is used as a heavy coating. However, the covering properties, i.e. optimum adaptability and conformability and good adherence to the floor, and the form stability of carpet tiles produced in this manner is not satisfactory. Additionally, polyurethane is expensive. Accordingly, hot melt masses based on atactic polypropylene or bitumen are used almost exclusively for the heavy coatings of carpet tiles where a pre-coating material is required.
It is the object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for the production of a carpet tile, which simplifies the known methods that use a pre-coating and a subsequent application of a hot melt heavy coating, and which enables the manufacture of carpet bands for tiles in one production step at a low cost.